The present invention relates to boxes and box covers in general, and in particular to boxes and covers which are expandable from a flattened configuration.
Many goods, be they intended for consumer producer use, require protection and shielding as they are shipped or stored. The temporary containers in which the products are transported must be sufficiently strong to adequately protect the contents, while at the same time not add inordinately to the cost of the product. Corrugated paperboard containers have won widespread acceptance not only for short term shipment and storage, but also for long term warehousing of documents and records.
Corrugated paperboard containers are formed from sheet stock and are usually glued into flattened assemblies for shipment to the end user. The boxes are typically erected by a sequence of folding and bending steps. In fully automated operations, where many identical boxes are assembled in a fixed location, machines are available which present assembled boxes for filling. In more specialized situations however, where boxes of many different sizes are required, or where the location of box usage is variable, boxes are still commonly assembled by hand. In hand assembly ease of box assembly is of key concern to reduce time of assembly as well as the fatigue of the assemblers.
Storage boxes with automatic erecting bottoms are known, such as my High Stacking Strength Automatic Corrugated Box, disclosed in my copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/936,329, filed Sep. 24, 1997, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. Other corrugated containers are known in which two adjacent side walls are connected to one another by glue tabs having angled folds, such as my earlier U.S. Pat. No. 3,258,191 or U.S. Pat. No. 2,220,076 to Carruth. However, containers which require glue to be applied only in triangular regions can be difficult to manufacture on some common equipment. In addition, corrugated containers with greater wall strength are desirable.
What is needed is a container which is readily erected from a glued-up corrugated paperboard blank which is assembled with a minimum of steps, and which is economical to produce.